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Handless terror suspect tried to get refund for prepaid phone

He’s the frugal terror suspect.

Handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri told a jury Monday that he once tried to get a refund on hundreds of dollars that he forked over on prepaid minutes for a satellite phone after it was likely “stolen” by the Yemen government’s military during a rescue effort in a 1998 kidnapping of tourists that left four people dead.

Testifying for the third day at his Manhattan federal court terror trial, al-Masri confirmed that he supplied the phone to a group seeking to overthrow then-Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh — but said he wasn’t involved in the kidnapping and didn’t support it.

“I felt betrayed…These people broke their moral agreement with me,” the one-eyed, hook-handed Egyptian-born cleric alleged.

He said he instead took on the role of “acting like a mouthpiece, like Gerry Adams” of the IRA by offering his assistance to help negotiate the hostage’s release and prevent bloodshed.

Al-Masri said he spent 500 pounds ($843 in today’s US currency) to purchase the prepaid phone minutes on Dec. 28, 1998 so that the kidnapping group’s leader, Abu Hassan, could communicate with the Yemen government. Al-Masri, who was home in London when he made the purchase, said he soon tried to get his 500 pounds back from his service provider because Hassan stopped picking up his repeated calls and assumed the Yemen “government stole my phone.”

The refund request to NSD Global was denied.

Abu Hamza al-Masri replies to questions from his defense lawyer Joshua Dratel (unseen) in Manhattan federal court in this artist’s sketch May 12, 2014.Reuters

“It wasn’t clear who took the phone, but if the government take it, they a thief,” said al-Masri, who called the ex-Yemen president a “beggar.”

A NSD Global staffer last week testified that al-Masri “got a little agitated” after trying to pay the extra-minutes tab with two credit cards that were rejected before finally calling back with one that worked.

Al-Masri called again 45 minutes later and asked for a refund on the extra time, claiming it was being used by “principles in Saudi Arabia” and that the phone was “stolen,” the account honcho testified.

Al-Masri, who will be cross-examined by prosecutors Tuesday, also denied the government’s charges that he helped fund the Taliban and set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon.

Regarding the training camp charges, Al-Masri laughed off a key piece of government evidence: a fax from an associate claiming he was part of a group who had found a perfect Oregon ranch to set up a jihadist training area.

“I thought it was a funny joke. I threw it away,” said al-Masri, while describing the 1999 fax he received overseas at his London mosque from US-born militant James Ujaama.

He claimed that Oussama Kassir, a former henchman for bin Laden, “took the fax from the rubbish,” flew to America and then pursued the training camp plan without his support.

Al-Masri also claimed that he might be in trouble with the law over his confusion between the words “I” and “we” when asked to comment on damning remarks he made in a 2000 interview with one of the Yemen hostages, Mary Quin.

“We never thought it would be that bad,” Abu-Hamza says in the interview for Quin’s memoir.

The imam explained the misunderstanding by saying, “We Arabs use a lot we’s instead of I’s.”

Al-Masri faces life in prison if convicted.